The trouble with ebooks is (1) piracy and (2) its flood of poor titles … and the problems they cause for some authors. For example, when I published the ebook version of book 1, and again with book 2, my royalties were cut by about 2/3rds. From modest to negligible, basically.
Here are a few recent pirated copies …
Ebooks are not the problem
It’s true that text can be offered on digital media. The concept could have been intelligently pursued, with a standard format that was universally hosted and sensibly migrated to new platforms as needed.
Instead it was given to the marketplace to decide, and today ebooks are an increasingly disconnected, unfiltered mess of various half-defunct readers and platforms and formats and versions and code requirements and impossibly varying quality. It will only get worse as time and tech move on and both readers and publishers realize the current ebook situation eliminates the advantage books had: permanence. (Oh, and property rights.)
Advanced Technology, Primitive Execution
In this rudderless environment, it’s frankly been hard to spend a week of work time to convert Book 3’s manuscript for ebooks, hammering my dense head against poor and/or outdated/undated documentation and forum support–so I can satisfy 9 different formats along with a host of branded readers and mobiles and apps. The testing alone is a nightmare.
The alternative is to hire out, but LOL, this makes the ridiculousness of the finances even more stark.
No Rails on a Free Market Ride
It is also true that once a Book 3 ebook version is released, the whole trilogy will be stolen … this already happens with the other two books (the post image shows some recent ones). There are groups that do this, many quite self-righteously.
I want to do the right thing by readers, but lately I’ve even wondered if I should unpublish the first two ebook editions as that marketplace continues to criminalize.
Last month I was notified by an ebook distributor that I should update my first book’s file for newer ereader technology. So the cracks begin to appear.
I would like to hear what others think … it’s not an obvious world anymore.